When comparing Yi vs Atom, the Slant community recommends Atom for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?”Atom is ranked 8th while Yi is ranked 43rd. The most important reason people chose Atom is:

Atom has a built-in package manager and an extensive [list of packages](https://atom.io/packages). Packages are written in CoffeeScript.

Pros

Pro

Combines and improves upon the best text-editing features from your favorite editors

Yi has default configurations for Vim, Emacs, as well as CUA. It also makes several improvements that includes Sublime-like (multiple) cursors.

Pro

More performant than Vim

Vim can be rather slow due the age of its code base. In particular, running large macros in Vim can be rather painful. Since Yi is being built from scratch it has been engineered for performance and with the benefit of hindsight.

Pro

Extensible and modular editing features

As far as extensibility goes, Yi easily outstrips any other open-source text editor. Motions can be built from parser combinators, making them simultaneously flexible and modular - an open source hacker's dream.

Pro

Plugins work together

Packages work together because they compile together.

Pro

Extensive list of packages

Atom has a built-in package manager and an extensive list of packages. Packages are written in CoffeeScript.

Pro

Built-in package management

Atom was built from the ground up with the community in mind. Package management is therefore a first class feature.

Pro

Extendable

Due to its modular design, almost any aspect of the editor can be changed. Even seemingly core packages, like those taking care of search and replace functionality, can be forked on GitHub, and changed and replaced in the editor.The documentation for creating new plugins is also great, making it easier for developers to jump in and create plugins for Atom.

Pro

Multiplatform

Atom can run on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Pro

Free and open source

Atom is free, open source, and written in C++, LESS, and CoffeeScript.

Pro

Beginner friendly

One of the goals of Atom is to be a text editor for both experienced and beginner programmers. You can add keyboard shortcuts, change themes, install plugins, and change core settings by clicking through a GUI, or by manually editing config files the old-fashioned way. It has the added advantage of being built using the same engine that powers Google Chrome, so actions like opening and closing tabs feel familiar, even to new or non-programmers.

Pro

Multi-line select and edit

Multiple cursors and column selection allow for versatile ways of editing.ctrl + d will select the current word and each time the command is repeated, it adds the next occurrence of the word to the selection.ctrl + click or middle-mouse click will place another cursor in the place that's clicked. Cursors can then be controlled together. This also allows for selecting vertically.

Pro

Embedded Git control

Atom will highlight folders, files, and lines that have any uncommitted edits made. It also integrates really well with GitHub.

Pro

Command Palette support

Pro

Allows for instant file switching

By pressing Ctrl or Command + T and using fuzzy search, you can look for a file in your project.

Pro

Command line integration out of the box

Installing Atom adds two command line commands - atom and apm. The first one runs the application itself while the second is the Atom Package Manager that's used to add and remove various components from the package listing. While these features can be set up with other editors as well, Atom takes care of them out of the box.

Pro

Themes

You can theme and customize Atom to your liking.

Pro

HiDPI support

Atom has built-in HiDPI support with zero scaling issues.

Pro

Modern feel and very customizable and extendable

Pro

Vim plugin turns Atom into a modernized vim

Pro

Best support for Arduino with Platformio

Arduino is the most important platform for developing embedded systems.

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Cons

Con

Very few plugins available

Even though Yi is a general purpose text editor similar to Vim and Emacs, almost all of the plugins that have been written for Yi so far focus on supporting Haskell as a programming environment.

Con

No way to reuse your existing customizations and keybindings

If you have spent years crafting your .vimrc or .emacs, there's no way to reuse it in Yi. You have to start from scratch.

Con

Requires Haskell to compile and configure

GHC + Haskell packages makes for a rather large installation, which is a big ask for a relatively obscure terminal editor.

Con

Very slow startup time

Atom is very slow to startup, which is a big disadvantage if you are accustomed to using it to make quick changes on your files.

Con

High memory usage

Atom has a relatively high memory usage, especially when compared to some other text editors not based on Electron. For those who develop on the go, this also tends to mean shorter battery life.

Con

Has difficulty with large text files

Tends to crash or hang with large >(10MB) text files, making it less useful as a general text editor.

Con

Slows down exponentially with plugins

Extending it needs sacrificing responsiveness

Con

No text UI

Con

Doesn't handle RTL (right-to-left text) well

Text can't be highlighted and manipulated properly, cursor isn't displayed visually according to where it is logically (you have to type to find out), and similar issues.

Con

Not known when a new window will open

It's not really clear why and when a new window is opened when you open a file out of the tree view.

Con

Slow

Atom is not a native application. As such performance is subpar and the lag is especially noticeable on larger projects. It also opens a surprising amount of sub-processes and leaks a considerable amount of memory.

Con

Missing additional touches

As Atom is still relatively new, it's missing nice little touches that other text editors have implemented over the years. From simple ease-of-use items like middle-mouse button multi-cursor select, to the ways pasted information from a spreadsheet is interpreted in multi-select situations.

Con

Crash and data loss

I lost unsaved changes 2 times when the app crashes.

A bugreport about that was closed automatically after some time, nobody cares.

Con

Doesn't recognize some keyboards

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